Survey is a learning experience

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Interviews with 30 of BRW magazine's Top 500
organisations reveal most off-the-shelf e-learning packages aren't
making the grade with customers, and learning-management systems
are underutilised. Ninety per cent of those surveyed recently by
market researcher the Cape Group develop their own e-training
packages because generic offerings aren't deemed relevant to their
specific business processes.

Cape Group director Dion Groeneweg says this holds true even of
online training for regulatory compliance, representing half of all
business and government packages.

Three-quarters of those surveyed use no vendor-created
courseware, deferring to in-house or outsourced custom
development.

Organisations on the whole are dissatisfied with the quality of
the vendor's content design process and skills, as well as the
significant amount of rework needed to complete courseware to their
specifications, Cape's report says. Vendor instructional design
skills are rated poorly and this is regarded as a key area for
improvement. Respondents also feel it takes vendors too long to
develop a course and that completion times could be significantly
improved.

Other complaints against off-the-shelf e-learning include
content not directly applying to the business or even the student's
industry sector. Some courses are advertised as standards-compliant
but are not.

However, Groeneweg says off-the-shelf e-learning isn't done for
yet. As the quality improves and it becomes more engaging, people
will see value in it, he says. For IT skills, there's significant
value in it already, but there's room for improvement.

The Cape report may also signal trouble for learning management
system (LMS) vendors, with low use of today's key technologies
leading to poor prospects for future upgrades. Only 17 per cent of
those interviewed use their LMS skills-gap analysis features, and
as few as 10 per cent use e-learning with employee performance
planning.

The opportunity is for companies to use the additional
functionality, but people have to think long-term, Groeneweg says.
The fundamentals are there but it's the short-term goals driving
e-learning. The current business need is to make the content
online.

Skills-gap analysis is part of the next wave. Rather than
tailoring e-learning to an employee's personal development - as
most learning management systems provide - employers usually choose
rudimentary job category access. But Groeneweg says in second-wave
implementations, a key factor will be linking performance
management and skills development.

With the skills shortage, there's going to be a war for talent,
Groeneweg predicts. "I think the availability of content on-line
means people can get the skills for other roles or several levels
up. Organisations will need to make it available for people to
take. So from a learning management point of view, managers need to
think outside the box."

The news gets worse for LMS vendors confronted with second-wave
e-learning material running perfectly well on their
first-generation systems. Groeneweg agrees that for many, a tough
sales cycle awaits, with half the respondents not measuring
successes against their investments' original business case. This
could make the majority of upgrades difficult to justify.

"A few mentioned being constrained by resources and having to
shift their focus to delivery rather than measurement," the report
says. "And then there were those who never saw the original
business case and no longer knew where it was."

Although the Cape Group's report didn't say so, this failure can
be put down to management inexperience. About 94 per cent of the
surveyed organisations had more than 1000 employees, meaning most
of their online learning is being driven by training and
development co-ordinators, not tech-investment-savvy IT or HR
departments. Yet many small to medium-sized organisations don't
have the funds or training co-ordinators to even get started.
Therefore, most of our economy is set to miss out on e-learning
productivity gains.

The model will most likely change, Groeneweg hopes. The
companies will not build internally but would pay by the user per
month. For this to happen, e-learning package vendors will require
more up-front capital to further customise offerings and reach
fragmented small business markets - before holding their breath
even longer as sales come in small monthly instalments.

This obvious mismatch between small and medium business needs
and training provider endurance could be bridged by tweaking
incentives within the existing traineeship system.

The Federal Government mainly funds upon course completion to
guarantee performance. But with e-learning, student achievement is
tracked throughout the process at no additional cost - a basic LMS
function.

Therefore, taking Australian business to the next level, through
customised rather than off-the-shelf e-learning, need not demand
more government assistance - only a change in the timing and
targeting of existing payments.

We can't expect off-the-shelf packages to go the last mile in
productivity development; e-learning must be customised to have its
full effect or business will reject it.